Stars win in Game 7, advance to West final

DALLAS — Roope Hintz and Wyatt Johnston scored, and the Dallas Stars advanced to the Western Conference final with a 2-1 win over the Seattle Kraken in Game 7 on Monday night.

Dallas moves on to play first-year Stars coach Pete DeBoer’s former team, the Vegas Golden Knights.

A day after his 20th birthday, Johnston made it 2-0 with 7:12 left when he gathered a puck that ricocheted off the back boards to the left of the Seattle net. He then sent a shot that went off the shoulder and mask of goalie Phillip Grubauer before going into the net.

“It’s a world-class play by one of the youngest players in the league,” DeBoer said. “He’s been fantastic all year. He’s a big part of our group. It feels like the deeper we get, the more we rely on him, the more responsibility he wants.”

DeBoer improved to 7-0 in Game 7s, this being the fourth different team he led to a win in the finale of a bestof-seven series that went the distance.

The Stars hadn’t won a Game 7 at home since 2000, when they made the Stanley Cup Final.

Grubauer stopped 26 shots, two weeks after his 33 saves when Seattle won 2-1 at Colorado in another Game 7 to knock out last year’s Stanley Cup champion.

Hintz’s ninth goal of the playoffs was credited as an unassisted tally and came with 4:01 left in the second period, the deepest any game in this series got before a score.

Oliver Bjorkstrand scored with 17.6 seconds left, preventing the shutout for Stars goalie Jake Oettinger, who finished with 21 saves.

The Kraken got the puck in the Stars’ zone for a lastgasp shot to force overtime but fell short.

“We pushed as hard as we could push tonight. We couldn’t find our top gear,” Seattle coach Dave Hakstol said.

“Give Dallas a lot of credit in that regard. To a certain degree, they answered the game that we played in Game 6.”